[HN Gopher] FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in ...
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FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History with
Used Vans
Author : cwwc
Score : 430 points
Date : 2023-06-27 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There was a brief discussion of this about five days ago, though
| _well below_ the dupelicate-submission threshold, with only 5
| comments:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460395>
|
| From Jalopnik: "FedEx Odometer Fraud"
| <https://jalopnik.com/fedex-named-in-what-could-be-one-of-the...>
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| I find this hard to believe. The claims of both lawsuits are
| basically the same. The FedEx routes are all independently owned.
| The route owners are responsible for fixing their vehicles. Parts
| get replaced constantly. Its a never ending mechanics job to
| serve these fleet vehicles.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| I remember hearing a story of a car rental doing this on a
| systematic scale. When they were caught, they acknowledged a
| "mistake" and offered to reimburse difference in price.
|
| However, they were caught fiddling the mileage again on the
| 'reimbursed' cars (not upping it enough). They were caught for
| the second time because the catalytic converter had a chip that
| counted every 250 miles or something along those lines.
| whartung wrote:
| Semi-related anecdote regarding this. This won't happen with UPS
| delivery vans, as they have them custom made and scrap them at
| end of life.
|
| I assume for trademark purposes, among other things.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Keeping outsiders from inspecting them may be a goal too. I
| hear they are at best a "rattletrap calamity" anymore.
| crhulls wrote:
| I'd encourage a bit more skepticism to this article. While this
| accusation could possibly be true, there are two things to keep
| in mind, which I am sharing having experience as a founder/CEO
| who has gone from startup to IPO:
|
| 1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit.
| Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby
| they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for
| clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean this
| is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just
| blindly be trusted.
|
| 2) There is a strong theme of "of course execs lie cheat steal at
| every turn" and I also think this narrative should be questioned.
| Ethics aside, the level of compliance in a public company is
| insanely high. Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which
| fraud can lead to, you'd need to see something more existential
| than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.
|
| I felt inclined to comment as I've been on the other end of
| articles like this, and it is astounding the level of mind
| reading people have done into my intent and actions on things
| that were factually just not true at all. I also truly would find
| it very difficult to commit a broad organizational fraud even if
| I wanted to and my company is only 500 people.
|
| If I had to make a prediction, the case is less black and white
| than it appears, and if there was fraud, it was probably
| committed at a non-executive level by the person whose P&L was
| directly tied to these resales. Or, it was done independently by
| the much smaller leasing company where this was more existential
| to them. It is highly unlikely to be a Fed Ex executive-level
| conspiracy.
|
| I'm sure there are a few counter examples, such as say the VW
| emissions scandal, but I would counter these were the exceptions
| that proved the rule and in general when the C-level was involved
| was much higher stakes.
| Alupis wrote:
| > VW emissions scandal
|
| VW is in the business of selling vehicles, and has a real
| interest there to push the envelope as much as possible.
|
| FedEx is _not_ in the business of selling used vehicles. These
| vehicle sales likely don 't impact their core business in the
| slightest - making an organization-wide scandal just silly to
| even think about.
|
| Looking online, these types of "vans" sell for anywhere between
| $5,000 and $30,000 (with 4 digit miles)[1]. Seriously... FedEx
| isn't going to blink at any of this.
|
| These class actions are always brought by bottom-feeding
| lawyers that use serial-plaintiffs. The reality is the class
| action bit will be retracted, and the lawyers, err, plaintiff
| will receive a "go the hell away please" payment. That's the
| game here...
|
| [1] https://www.auctiontime.com/listings/trucks/auction-
| results/...
| guywithahat wrote:
| Although I know this might get met with pushback, I think
| it's reasonable to argue some of the regulations pushing back
| against VW were only there because domestic manufacturers
| didn't want to have to compete. You could argue the emissions
| scandal wasn't just about money, it had a government
| corruption component to it as well.
| adolph wrote:
| It may have been somewhat more easy to regulate nitrogen
| oxide emissions in the US, but it isn't primarily a
| protectionist move and VW was also cheating in the EU.
|
| _Underlying U.S. and EU emission standards_
|
| _The Volkswagen and Audi cars identified as violators had
| been certified to meet either the US EPA Tier 2 / Bin 5
| emissions standard or the California LEV-II ULEV standard.
| Either standard requires that nitrogen oxide emissions not
| exceed 0.043 grams per kilometre (0.07 g/mi) for engines at
| full useful life which is defined as either 190,000
| kilometres (120,000 mi) or 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi)
| depending on the vehicle and optional certification
| choices._
|
| _This standard for nitrogen oxide emissions is among the
| most stringent in the world. For comparison, the
| contemporary European standards known as Euro 5 (2008 "EU5
| compliant", 2009[5]-2014 models) and Euro 6 (2015 models)
| only limit nitrogen oxide emissions to 0.18 grams per
| kilometre (0.29 g/mi) and 0.08 grams per kilometre (0.13
| g/mi) respectively. Defeat devices are forbidden in the EU.
| The use of a defeat device is subject to a penalty._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
| MikeHolman wrote:
| I'm sure this isn't something at the exec level, but it seems
| possible someone somewhere in middle management who oversaw
| used van sales wanted to increase their revenue numbers and
| thought cheating the odometer would be an easy way to boost
| their numbers.
| Alupis wrote:
| It's not even clear if FedEx has anything to do with this.
| The other named defendant is "Holman Fleet Leasing", which
| seems to imply these vehicles were leased to FedEx.
|
| If that's the case, then any possible scandal here would be
| squarely on the company selling the vehicles - not FedEx.
|
| FedEx might just be a tacked-on name. You see that quite
| often with Prop 65 cases. The plaintiff attorneys add
| anyone even remotely related to the case, just to drive up
| pressure and chaos, hoping for quicker/larger settlement
| offers.
|
| In this situation, even if FedEx has nothing to do with
| vehicles sales, they might opt to settle and write a check
| just to make the bad publicity go away. If you think that
| sounds like a shakedown, you'd be right.
| fatfingerd wrote:
| In a civil case this is the right thing to do. Chances
| are good that a company as large as FedEx very closely
| met with leasing providers and discussed how they were
| going to get those costs down, better than if FedEx
| didn't lease. The lawyers would be silly not to fish for
| signs that FedEx knew a bit about why it could get the
| leasing rates it wanted.
| Alupis wrote:
| I have no doubt the leasing company would factor in re-
| sale value of the vehicles... that's how _all_ vehicle
| leases work.
|
| I do doubt FedEx would be in any way involved in the
| details of selling leased vehicles. I can say with a high
| degree of confidence there never was a meeting with FedEx
| execs where they pitched the idea of increasing residuals
| by swapping odometers...
| fatfingerd wrote:
| That's not really necessary. It sounds unlikely to me
| that there wouldn't be a paper trail with someone in
| FedEx's procurement about such a project, particularly if
| this really included FedEx racking the miles on the new
| odometer.
|
| A project to cut an ongoing vendors costs is about the
| only way for a large cap procurement specialist to meet
| and exceed targets with no possibility of additional
| valid free market bids. That opens them right up to
| questions of liability, with managers knowing or avoiding
| knowledge, workarounds, special advice to other
| divisions, etc.
|
| You don't have to go to jail to lose a lawsuit.. I worked
| for a company that put together a whole system for
| reporting these kinds of ethics irregularities in the
| companies favor. I don't think that was a charity, they
| act as a defense or at least lower punitive damages a
| judge is likely to award when violations still occur.
| joshAg wrote:
| There's actually a legal reason for tacking on anyone who
| is plausibly liable. The basic idea is to sue everyone in
| a single case and let the court sort out actual liability
| for each party as part of that single case.
|
| Say the lawsuit is originally against just Holman Fleet
| Leasing and FedEx is the one legally liable (Maybe FedEx
| is the one that is doing something naughty. Maybe there's
| some contractual language around Fedex assuming all legal
| liabilities for the vehicles sold.). You're going to
| spend a bunch of time in court arguing with Holman about
| if they're even the right party to sue, and your case is
| either going to get thrown out or you're going to lose.
| Meanwhile, the statute of limitations is still ticking,
| so if it takes a long enough time to adjudicate the case
| against Holman, you won't even be able to refile the same
| case with the correct respondent. Oops. but if the
| statute of limitations miraculously hasn't run out yet,
| that's not even considering the possibility that the kind
| of person who would roll back an odometer would also have
| a punishingly short document retention policy, so all the
| documents that still existed at the time you filed
| against Holman have long since been shredded and
| destroyed, so your discovery in the new case against
| Fedex is going to be a single email saying "yeah, we
| don't have anything going back that far. Oops again.
|
| Now consider the lawsuit filed initially against both
| Holman and Fedex. Assuming your list of respondents is
| complete, the case isn't going to get thrown out because
| you sued the wrong person. Liability will still be
| adjudicated (and the case amended to drop respondents as
| the proper liability holder gets determined), but now you
| don't need to worry about the statute of limitations
| running out as you wait for the determination of
| liability against the first respondent. And the document
| retention clock starts with that lawsuit and covers the
| time where you're just determining who hold liability, so
| now they can't delete those documents even if they other
| wise would be. Both of them are now going to be legally
| required to retain all the stuff you list in discovery
| for the duration of at least their involvement in the
| case. Sure, they could destroy those records anyway, but
| that sort of thing is regularly used to infer guilt of
| the respondent with the worst possible inferences when
| it's destroyed in violation of discovery.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Well yeah there's that, but it can't have been just one
| person; there's at least dozens of people involved in the
| trading and maintenance of these things, there's paper
| trails for the purchase and I presume installing and
| replacing of the odometers; there's bound to be loads of
| people that are in the know, and since the true odometer
| reading can be read from the onboard computer, I find it
| really hard to believe that nobody caught this before.
|
| It would've taken just one case of a mismatch between the
| digital and physical odometer without it being mentioned
| for a huge stink to be thrown up. And it'd also be the
| auction house's name on the block, because they should
| check these things themselves. If this is as widespread as
| they claim it to be, then even the occasional spot checks
| would show it.
| _s wrote:
| For a company that has its own relatively large fleet of
| aircraft ... $5,000-$30,000 is a few screws and some grease
| on an airframe.
|
| While the some book keepers will care, in its grand scheme of
| operations that amount is negligible to the point where it
| may cost them more in man power than what they recoup from
| doing so.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > VW is in the business of selling vehicles, and has a real
| interest there to push the envelope as much as possible.
|
| As I understand it (sorry, I don't have a citation handy) was
| that VW was gaming the tests, but in order to make their
| vehicles' operations MORE efficient. That is, the tests are
| dumb because they concentrate on start-up emissions with less
| attention to warm running. VW wanted to also optimize the
| warm running, but to do that they had to game the software to
| still appear to optimize only for the cold start.
|
| That is, aside from the ethical problem of cheating the
| regulation (a big aside to be sure), they were acting _more_
| responsibly than most.
| toast0 wrote:
| > VW was gaming the tests, but in order to make their
| vehicles' operations MORE efficient.
|
| VW's cheating is in essence the cars have two modes to run
| the engine; compliance mode and performance mode, and they
| run in compliance mode when the car starts up until the
| steering wheel is turned (more or less).
|
| In compliance mode, the engine control follows the rules to
| meet the emissions test standards. In performance mode,
| operating temperature is allowed to increase, which
| increases performance, increases fuel efficiency, idles
| better, etc, but increased operating temperature leads to
| more NOx emissions.
|
| Additional, for models with diesel emissions fluid,
| performance mode injected much less DEF than compliance
| mode; DEF reduces operating temperature as well as directly
| reacting withe NOx. This reduced use of DEF allowed a
| smaller DEF tank to be used; regulations require passenger
| car DEF tanks to have enough capacity for normal use within
| the regular service interval; if the vehicle was operating
| in compliance mode the whole time, you'd need to fill the
| DEF tank between oil changes (or have a larger tank, which
| needs to fit somewhere).
|
| In the end, the big tradeoff is fuel efficiency (and
| therefore CO2 emissions) vs NOx emissions; which is a fine
| tradeoff to consider, but you can't give drivers what they
| want and regulators what they want without cheating.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| In Europe there was a shift around 2010 from CO2 to NOx.
|
| Before the shift there was an influx of tiny cars with
| tiny diesel engines which had emissions <= 99grams CO2 /
| km.
|
| Now it's NOx all around. In fact, The Netherlands has
| limited daytime speeds on highways to 100km/h vs
| 120/130km/h just for this purpose.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > As I understand it (sorry, I don't have a citation handy)
|
| This is so irresponsible of you to just assert without
| evidence, and is so out of context to portray VW as the
| good guys here. They did not break the rules and flaunt
| regulations to make their system more efficient. They did
| so to cover up their failure to deliver on a new generation
| of "clean diesel" tech. VW thought they could do it, they
| invested billions in it, and they couldn't figure out how
| to do it without emitting way too many other pollutants. So
| they built their cars to lie to regulators.
|
| The tests cover an extensive range of use cases, mostly
| warm running. There were two modes, one that was more fuel
| efficient but emitted NOx above regulations, and one that
| was less fuel efficient but was within NOx regulations.
| They detected when the tires were on suspension that
| simulates real-world driving for testing. They got caught
| by academics who wanted to test real-world vs simulated
| suspension.
|
| Here is actual source, Bloomberg, which isn't some kind of
| environmentalist or anti-business publication: (https://web
| .archive.org/web/20160312181801/https://www.bloom...):
|
| "The road tests captured a variety of conditions: high
| elevations up Mt. Baldy; stop-and-go urban errand-running
| in San Diego; freeway driving around Los Angeles. The two
| Volkswagens' emissions exceeded standards by 5 to 35 times.
| The BMW's didn't. [...] The Lean NOx Trap is a system of
| concessions. To get cleaner exhaust, you'd need to use a
| squirt of fuel every few seconds to burn up nitrogen oxide.
| Or, in the other direction, to get better fuel efficiency,
| you'd need to spew out dirtier exhaust. Managing this
| trade-off requires a complex calibration of the onboard
| computer, the engine control unit, so it can adjust
| constantly to variables like temperature and speed and
| optimize both emissions and fuel usage. The trouble was,
| Volkswagen hadn't been able to get its new engines to
| comply with the stringent U.S. standards."
|
| The reason is they had invested in a "clean diesel" engine
| tech that was supposed to be their market differentiator.
| VW invested billions into it. Yes, it was more fuel
| efficient, but it was supposed to also stay within existing
| pollution emissions regulations. Nobody else made such big
| investments in clean diesel because they couldn't figure
| out how to make it more efficient without also emitting
| pollutants at much higher levels. But everybody was so
| bought into it that they felt they had to cover it up.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| [dead]
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think the VW situation is at all unique, just the
| handling of it. I understood Deiselgate because I've worked for
| managers who just wanted checkboxes checked, and I've seen
| people who reward monetarily or with praise for solving
| problems but who don't check for dead bodies before doing so.
| Too many coworkers who get promoted for making messes others
| had to clean up. What if the cleaners don't exist in sufficient
| numbers? Or get laid off?
|
| When you combine a mercenary mind with oversight from a person
| who doesn't believe in "if it seems too good to be true, it
| probably is" that's when the bad stuff starts to happen.
|
| There's also a machismo school of business that lionizes force
| of will. Telling employees you want something that seems
| impossible and expecting them to get it. Nevermind that by far
| the easiest way to cross an impossible finish line is _to cheat
| your ass off_.
|
| How many products do we need class action suits on? How many
| exposes on child or captive labor? How many superfund sites?
| How many companies going bankrupt ten years later when the
| truth comes out, before we hold people accountable and call
| bullshit on the "aw shucks" response to tough questions?
|
| Or maybe a Bachelor of Arts from a business school is not
| enough rigorous education to run a multinational company.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I understand your defensiveness, but the article did not even
| imply that the CEO was directly implicated. That said, I think
| it is still at some level their responsibility if this fraud
| turns out to be true; "the person whose P&L was directly tied
| to these resales" still had ever stricter OKR's they had to
| answer for, and apparently no double-checking or auditing was
| done because that person's boss didn't want to know. They were
| rewarded for numbers going up and to the right, as was their
| boss, as was their boss, up to the CEO.
|
| Sorry, I just tire of narratives where when a corporation does
| something morally wrong, it's the fault of nebulous capitalist
| hyper-optimization and no individuals are held accountable.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| This is really the crux of the failure of organizations. The
| execs might not want fraud (or other problems) to happen.
|
| But, upper and middle management don't care about the company
| as much as the execs. They would much rather show the
| numbers, earn their comp and fuck off, than worry about long
| term sustainability of the company or of their reports.
|
| Has anyone really complained about middle management yet?
| salawat wrote:
| The only thing a frustrated middle manager can do to deal
| with sociopathic upper management that turns a blind eye to
| departmental suffering is to candidly look at the bullshit
| you have to put up with, then make the decision on whether
| you've got the life left for this bullshit.
|
| Unironically, earn the comp, and fuck off to let the next
| person up the totem pole deal with the consequences of
| their decisions.
|
| Shit may roll downhill, but sometimes, nothing changes til
| the guy at the top gets a swift boot to the ass in the form
| of a dose of Real Life (TM).
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Yes, a decent middle manager doesn't have too many
| choices either.
|
| It is getting clearer to everyone (from execs to ICs)
| that the command structure with layers and layers of
| management gives rise to pathological behaviors in the
| organization.
|
| Perhaps this round of recession will bring some change to
| organization structures - ideally with less middle
| management.
| eastbound wrote:
| Fast growing startups have little middle management.
| Bloated pathologic orgs dying in a recession have a lot
| of management. To have fewer management, we need to only
| have young companies and let older ones collapse sooner.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| A flatter hierarchy isn't a great solution to an excess
| middle management when it means that one manager has
| 15-20 direct reports, as opposed to a healthier target
| number of 6-8 or maybe 10-12 at maximum. It is important
| that each manager has adequate time to manage each of
| their people in a way that enables the kind of proper
| relationship that supports their team members when they
| need it.
|
| The current round of recession will probably temporarily
| shrink some companies or cut off some lines of business,
| thereby flattening the hierarchy in a less harmful way
| than what I described. But overworking managers is a
| different bad thing.
|
| Maybe you're advocating for a smaller maximum company
| size overall, so that a relatively flat hierarchy doesn't
| overwhelm those managers who do remain? Or for some right
| of participation by non-executive managers in collective
| worker action, as exists in Germany and as acted in the
| original version of the US National Labor Relations Act
| before the Taft-Hartley amendments, so that some kinds of
| large-company pathologies can be addressed better?
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The main reason why flatter hierarchies doesn't work is
| because managers are asked to do work reporting, career
| management and performance management. But all of these
| are pathological, BS work.
|
| Reporting can literally be done by an "administrative
| assistant". You could have an administrative assistant
| for 50 ICs and it won't make a difference. There is no
| need for layers.
|
| Career management only exists because there are so many
| layers in the ladder. If there were only 2 levels, and
| then VP, there would be no need for career management.
| There is no need for layers for the actual work to get
| done.
|
| Performance management is another load of crap because it
| is something that should only be required for
| determination of rewards or to completely fire people.
| But this job doesn't need layers and layers of
| management.
|
| If you want to see the structure top down, the CEO should
| have VPs who allocate money to teams. The teams should
| have pieces of ownership that they are supposed to run
| and maintain. A team lead/captain can run the team.
|
| But that's it. What is the need for kingdoms of apes that
| don't really do much except pushing work downwards?
| koheripbal wrote:
| We need to make evidence based judgements, not accusation
| based judgements.
|
| I'm tired of the outage-clickbait.
|
| I'm here to learn, not to be emotionally manipulated.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's evidence from one side in the lawsuits, while the
| defendants have so far declined to submit any for scrutiny.
| In any case, the title of this submission says that Fedex
| is 'accused' of fraud rather than having been found guilty
| of it, so you knew what you were getting before you
| clicked; you could have just ignored it.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| When someone files a complaint against you with a court
| of appropriate jurisdiction to start a lawsuit, your only
| sane option is to file an answer. The complaint lists
| their allegations point by point. The answer either
| admits or denies each allegation, point by point.
|
| It is not surprising that FedEx has declined to submit
| evidence for scrutiny. It's not time for that yet. They
| will be required to do so in discovery and they better
| hope they can at trial but right now we should not expect
| to hear anything from them other than "admit, deny,
| insufficient basis to form a belief and therefore deny."
|
| It's just too early for an evidence based discussion.
| This is the nature of the civil action.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's absolutely nothing preventing them asserting
| their version of events and following up with evidentiary
| filings within a reasonable timeframe. Just like there's
| nothing preventing corporations from admitting liability
| and apologizing, but they generally prefer to settle
| instead and never ever admit fault, thanks to the
| pernicious doctrine of maximizing shareholder value.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's no value in presenting your evidence in the court
| of public opinion and intrigue. Argue your position in an
| actual court, where and when it matters. If a bunch of
| impatient people over-react to hearing only one side's
| argument, so be it; you'll exhaust yourself trying to
| convince them anyway and, in general, their opinion isn't
| worth swaying.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Of course there is, perception matters or companies
| wouldn't have PR departments. They shove their brands in
| the public's face 24/7 with messages about how great they
| are but when they look bad they put on an air of injured
| dignity and cite platitudes about the legal system. The
| reality is that corporations usually just hope to exhaust
| plaintiffs in the legal system instead.
|
| I went to law school and am married to someone who works
| in litigation at a top 10 law firm, I understand very
| well how the legal process works both technically and in
| economic/strategic terms.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Would companies prefer to have their PR departments
| talking about positive things the company is doing or
| refreshing and giving voice to an accusation of odometer
| rollbacks? I read nothing into FedEx's silence on the
| topic, other than they are being run by adults taking
| competent advice.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Isn't this an example of an "accusation based judgement"?
|
| > This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit.
| Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls
| whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And
| journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the
| sensationalism. It doesn't mean this is one of those, but a
| class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.
|
| This amounts to "class action lawyers and journalists are
| bad so we can ignore what they're saying".
| sokoloff wrote:
| I don't think you have to conclude that was shared for
| that reason. It could be shared simply as "this is what a
| plaintiff alleges, and we don't have any data or anything
| further to verify that these claims are true."
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > There is a strong theme of "of course execs lie cheat steal
| at every turn" and I also think this narrative should be
| questioned.
|
| This narrative is "middle-middle management lies, cheats, and
| steals at every turn and sometimes on other people's turns
| too".
|
| And while we might question that narrative about execs, we know
| that it is unfailingly true of middle management. It's not
| unexpected, that's what happens when perverse incentive is
| piled on top of perverse incentive. Someone was racing for a
| bonus. And discovery's going to show that there was some absurd
| uptick in how many OEM odometers for this model were ordered in
| the problem years, far in excess of anything that had happened
| previously.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Very well said. Let's bring a few salient points:
|
| All of us here work at jobs, possibly in very large corporates.
| Do we see anything illegal going on? I would reckon that >90%
| of us have gone through our corporate life without ever being a
| part of anything close to even illegal, at worst we forward
| something to legal to be extra sure. So if we think
| corporations are regularly behaving illegally, we all have
| simultaneously seemed to have lucked out to be in the one the
| one ethical and legally compliant organization.
|
| If some part of your worldview is that the world is being
| filled with greedy, selfish and unethical people, constantly
| trying to screw over others but you are the exception most
| likely your worldview is completely off (Most people view
| themselves as the good guy/ hero of their world). In my
| experience it is very unlikely for anyone in C Suite to ever
| risk any actual fraud in their dealings (or anyone in the
| organization really), however lawyers are essentially parasites
| on society who feed on productive work to make a living while
| gaslighting rest of society into believing that they're playing
| an important role in protecting it.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > All of us here work at jobs, possibly in very large
| corporates. Do we see anything illegal going on? I would
| reckon that >90% of us have gone through our corporate life
| without ever being a part of anything close to even illegal,
| at worst we forward something to legal to be extra sure. So
| if we think corporations are regularly behaving illegally, we
| all have simultaneously seemed to have lucked out to be in
| the one the one ethical and legally compliant organization.
|
| This line of argument only works if the majority of a company
| is exposed to illegal behavior.
|
| If a large company can commit (or attempt to commit) illegal
| behavior, while making that behavior only visible to a small
| fraction of people, then this argument falls apart.
|
| For example, how many people were involved and aware of the
| VW emissions scandal? 200? 400? Out if 200,000 worldwide
| employees. So >99% of VW employees would have likely reported
| not having observed illegal behavior. That does not mean that
| those employees "lucked out" into working for an ethical
| legally-compliant company. It means the company is smart
| enough to hide its unethical and disreputable behavior from
| its employees as much as possible.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >...if there was fraud, it was probably committed at a non-
| executive level by the person whose P&L was directly tied to
| these resales. Or, it was done independently by the much
| smaller leasing company where this was more existential to
| them.
|
| I think most high-level executives are competent enough to
| create legal incentives and disincentives to their organization
| which typically are legal. The "lie, cheat, and steal"
| narrative is about functional outcomes and not so much about
| explicit follow through.
|
| Executives are in positions they can craft goals and to some
| degree pass responsibility of details of those goals off to
| others. I can set unrealistic targets that are only attainable
| by cutting corners and be sure to make it clear I'll drop
| people who don't meet those targets or reward people who do. I
| can leave in-depth questioning about the approach (the
| potentially dirty details) to create a layer of plausible
| deniability.
|
| It's as if I hire a driver to take me from point A to point B.
| That distance may be impossible to cover without violating an
| array of traffic laws. My goal as the passenger though is to
| traverse the space safely at some price. I don't really care
| about how it's done, I'll leave that to the driver. I can
| create pressure on a driver and/or apply selection bias to
| choosing a driver willing to take on my impossible request. At
| no point did I say: violate traffic laws, speed, etc. but I
| know that's what's going to happen to attain my goal. I never
| incriminate myself by making the goal generalized and as a
| passenger, I take on no legal risks for my driver violating
| traffic laws. Suddenly, using a crafted goal, careful
| selection, and money, I've created a situation for something
| illegal to happen. Should I be at fault? What if I even added
| to criteria of transporting me from A to B not to violate
| traffic laws but I give a wink wink, shove a little more money
| (incentive) at the problem, or turn the cheek when it occurs so
| I don't witness it. Am I still not at fault?
|
| A caricature of this behavior in my opinion is Donald Trump who
| operates completely in the grey areas wherever possible,
| pushing or promoting questionable behavior but avoiding the
| provable cases where he's responsible. From my interaction with
| various executives over the years, this strategy isn't unique.
| It's certainly not everyone but impossible environments and
| requests are made on the daily. It happens from the highest
| levels and gets passed down and down.
| delfinom wrote:
| >1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit.
| Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby
| they can spin almost any story they want.
|
| The complaint has 4 cited individuals and follows up on an
| already ongoing lawsuit with a used vehicle dealer that filed a
| lawsuit in 2017 over being scammed as well.
| freejazz wrote:
| >1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit.
| Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby
| they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go
| for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn't mean
| this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not
| just blindly be trusted.
|
| Do you think the rules that apply to patent litigators and
| class action litigators are different than the rules that apply
| to other litigators? I really don't understand what you seem to
| think is going on here, it's a bit naive imo (all the lawyers
| that I don't like are the bad ones and they lie!)
|
| and I didn't even make it to your next part of your post, where
| you think that business executives are the honest ones! They
| aren't. They don't have their own personal license and
| livelihoods at risk most of the time, unlike attorneys.
| delfinom wrote:
| >1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit.
| Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby
| they can spin almost any story they want.
|
| The complaint class action references 4 affected independent
| individuals as victims.
|
| But, this entire thing is in parallel with an already ongoing
| lawsuit by a used vehicle broker that filed a lawsuit in 2017
| over being scammed as well.
|
| https://cdllife.com/2021/fedex-battles-lawsuit-over-millions...
| burkaman wrote:
| > Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can
| lead to, you'd need to see something more existential than
| slightly increasing margins on used van sales.
|
| This seems incredibly naive. You'd have to be willfully
| ignorant to think that a) rich people won't break the law to
| make a tiny bit more money, and b) fraud committed by large
| corporations often results in jail time.
|
| I agree with you that this article isn't worth very much, but
| that's only because lawsuits in general shouldn't be trusted
| without corroborating evidence, not because a rich executive
| would never do this.
| hinkley wrote:
| At some point it's like an addiction.
|
| "No one becomes a billionaire without hurting a lot of
| people" is still true, though inflation will eventually make
| us have to change that to "multi-billionaire".
| ordu wrote:
| _> This seems incredibly naive._
|
| I personally see nothing naive in the parent post. It brings
| arguments based on knowledge how organization works and
| appeals to a game theory (stakes do not match). I'm not
| saying the reasoning is necessarily valid, but it is not
| naive.
|
| The only part of the parent comment I do not approve from a
| methodology standpoint is an appeal to "exception that proves
| the rule". Exceptions do not prove rules, they disprove them.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| "No parking on Sundays" is an exception that proves the
| rule. The implied rule is that parking is allowed on Monday
| through Saturday.
|
| I almost never see this phrase used correctly however.
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't think there's a single "correct" way to use that
| phrase, different people understand it differently. The
| meaning I'm most familiar with is an obscure exception
| demonstrating that your rule of thumb is usually
| reliable. For example:
|
| "Street parking is always allowed"
|
| "Not always! Three years ago there was a marathon that
| went through this street and you weren't allowed to park
| here that morning."
|
| This exception is so specific and obscure that it
| "proves" (in a casual conversational sense) that "you can
| always park here" is a good rule. Not all exceptions
| prove the rule: if the exception is "except on weekends
| and holidays and overnight", that's so significant and
| obvious that it actually disproves the rule.
| rhino369 wrote:
| The person you are replying to used it in the classic
| sense.
|
| It was commonly mis-used to mean "eh that just a minor
| exception that you should ignore." But it's been mis-used
| so much that now it has both meaning.
| taeric wrote:
| If it helps, you can rephrase it to "the exceptional nature
| of these examples proves the general rule that it is not
| the case."
|
| This is, as I recall, literally the origin of the term?
| saalweachter wrote:
| I thought it was more along the lines of prove = test;
| the exceptions _clarify_ the rule. Or in AI training
| terms, you need negative test cases as well as positive
| test cases to adequately define a rule.
|
| Thou shalt not kill, except all the times thou shalt.
| taeric wrote:
| Words being what they are, and us not speaking the
| language that created this saying, I'm guessing both
| general ideas can be true. :D
|
| My memory is this came from Cicero and was about a place
| excluding women by rule, as they pointed to the exception
| of a woman that was allowed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_r
| ule seems to support both interpretations, and at least
| shows I got the speaker right. Not seeing that my
| specifics are good, though. I would not be shocked to
| know that I am wrong there.
| ftxbro wrote:
| > you'd need to see something more existential than slightly
| increasing margins
|
| in worlds where existence is related to health care which
| costs money which is related to margins, tampering with
| margins can be existential
| [deleted]
| johndhi wrote:
| Helpful perspective. As a lawyer who has worked on both sides
| of class actions, I generally classify these cases in four
| categories:
|
| -Legit cases that describe (or at least ultimately lead to
| finding) clear and meaningful wrongdoing. There's always some
| room for arguing one way or the other but ultimately there's
| some clarity that something meaningfully wrong happened. I
| think these are probably ~3-5 percent of cases filed. These
| cases tend to settle relatively early for high dollar figures.
|
| -Cases of clear but unimportant wrongdoing. Technically a
| statute was violated, but no one was really hurt at all. These
| tend to settle for small $ figures. Perhaps 20% of cases.
|
| -Important but unclear wrongdoing (evidence supports either
| finding; among one million documents, some look really bad,
| while others look very exculpatory). These stick around for a
| long time and ultimately earn lawyers a lot but cost the
| parties, on average, a lot of money to litigate. Perhaps 30% of
| cases.
|
| -Complete/fabricated nonsense and/or fishing expeditions. Cost
| defendants a fair amount (and brutal for small defendants), but
| not the end of the world for big defendants. Perhaps 50% of
| cases.
| curiousllama wrote:
| I think what you may be missing is the effect of compounding
| organizational incentives in big, old companies. I wonder - how
| much experience have you had in large legacy companies? (think
| "F100 company's subsidiary, based in Dubuque" type company)
|
| I once helped fix up a manufacturing co that materially
| overstated net income by >10% for a decade. And it was just a
| mix of honest mistakes, miscommunications, some incompetence,
| and a shockingly small amount of fraud (though not 0).
|
| I learned it's really easy for sr execs to run the company
| badly, one or two junior execs to push the limits, and a
| everyone else to just be a biiiit lazy - and bam, there's a big
| fraud.
|
| That said 0 stock is up 5% w/w, so this can't be THAT big
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _astounding the level of mind reading people have done_
|
| In this case, though, Fedex has just denied the allegations but
| not proffered any alternative explanation. Nature abhors a
| vacuum, and human nature abhors an information vacuum.
| Corporations habitually refuse to share information unless they
| are forced to do so legally, so they have only themselves to
| blame for the subsequent distrust by the public.
| zucked wrote:
| Even if you turn out to be flat wrong, I still appreciate the
| level-headedness to consider how we got to this point and the
| urging we all slow down a bit before we all march on FedEx
| headquarters.
| fundad wrote:
| > before we all march on FedEx headquarters
|
| It's a good thing the ownership class doesn't get away with
| literally everything because that would drive people to
| vigilante violence.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'd be lying if I said I'd never thought about it. Given
| how many dejected people there are in society, including
| those who have had military training, I'm surprised there
| hasn't been more of it at this point.
| jstarfish wrote:
| We had a lot more vigilante justice in the 70s. It went
| away with the rise of tough-on-crime laws in the 80s
| (vicarious punishment) and eventual counter-domestic
| terrorism (suppression) in the 90s. Bernie Goetz would be
| crucified these days.
|
| 00s just became mob rule via social mechanisms and
| manipulation; cliquish behavior is not something you can
| shoot or detonate, so we're stuck with people taking out
| their frustrations on children at school and anybody
| unsuspecting. The dejected are only going after targets
| they can reach (a tragic, but logical outcome).
|
| There was one aspiring vigilante in the last few years
| who drove across the country to assassinate some scummy
| judge or something and was immediately caught while doing
| recon. His mistake was going after someone afforded
| protection. Everything is political and treated as
| terrorism. It's too risky to vote from the rooftops these
| days; there are an increasingly-infinite number of ways
| to fail.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Fantastic comment and insight, thank you.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Misrepresenting an odometer reading as true is a federal
| offense, and it seems clear that this happened in at least one
| of the cases in the article. I've never seen a car title that
| doesn't have a field for noting an in accurate odometer.
| Federal rules also makes the seller sign an acknowledgement
| that the odometer reading is true, rolled over, or unknown.
|
| Maybe there was no conspiracy involved, and the fleet mechanics
| were just swapping out defective gauge clusters (somehow always
| swapping in a lower mileage cluster).
|
| So the best defense they have is that this was an accident of
| sloppy record keeping leading to a failure to make legally
| required disclosures... which is not a great defense.
| 20after4 wrote:
| AFAIK the odometer reading is only relevant if it's less than
| 100,000 miles. After that the odometer reading doesn't have
| to be included on the bill of sale and actual milage doesn't
| need to be disclosed accurately, by law. Maybe that's not the
| case in other states but I'm relatively sure it is in
| Missouri and the law is probably similar in a lot of other
| states if not identical. So at least in some places, this
| might be technically legal even if completely unethical.
| 20after4 wrote:
| BTW this is probably an outdated law from the time when
| vehicles odometers "rolled over" to zero after 99,999
| miles.
| olyjohn wrote:
| In some states there's a cut off after so many years. In
| Washington, it's a very low threshold, like a few years.
| I've owned something like 25+ cars and I have never filled
| out the odometer disclosure, since I've never owned a new-
| ish car.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| 10 years according to federal law.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| It's a federal law.
|
| The only exemption is for vehicles older than 10 years. In
| that case you don't need to make a declaration, but you
| still can.
| hinkley wrote:
| I am willing to believe that if you shuffle a problem around
| enough you create a situation where nobody knows the truth
| and we've made it punishingly difficult to go get it.
|
| It would be easy in a delivery business for an odometer to
| roll over one or even twice, and if you assign the new kid to
| get rid of the old trucks he might assume things.
|
| That is not to absolve anyone. The truth can be a liability
| or an asset, and has to be managed not unlike inventory.
|
| But that's not what happened here:
|
| > The lawsuit accuses FedEx of replacing the odometers in
| many of its vans with new ones that read zero miles, using
| the vans for a bit longer after that, and then selling them
| at auction with 100,000 miles or less on the new odometers.
|
| That stretches credulity. But also, if you buy a FedEx truck
| or a police cruiser thinking you got a good deal on a low
| mileage vehicle, you're a fucking idiot. Of course they're
| going to drive them into the ground before selling them.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Right, but my point is that the truth is actually pretty
| easy in this case.
|
| There's a federal law that requires you to either swear
| that you know the odometer reading is accurate, that the
| odometer has rolled over, or that the true odometer reading
| is unknown. This disclosure is made on every vehicle sale,
| and there's a standard form.
|
| If you can't swear to the first two, you swear to the last
| one.
|
| I wouldn't assume that a low mileage fleet vehicle is
| necessarily beat. Maybe it was assigned to a short route
| (There's a FedEx route on Lopez Island in Washington, half
| his day is spent on the ferry), maybe it is being phased
| out early due to a change to electric. There's a lot of
| reasons FedEx might sell a low mileage vehicle, and if you
| have a legal document from a major corporation stating that
| the mileage is accurate, most people would trust that.
| kevinpet wrote:
| This is incorrect. It's easy to find the actual statement
| required: https://eforms.com/images/2017/06/Federal-
| Odometer-Disclosur...
|
| > I, ______________________ (SELLER'S NAME, PRINT) state
| that the odometer now reads ______________________ miles
| (NO TENTHS) and to the best of my knowledge that it
| reflects the actual mileage of the vehicle described
| below, unless one of the following statements is checked.
|
| The seller is only strongly asserting what the odometer
| reads. If the seller doesn't know anything about that
| vehicle, then "to the best of [their] knowledge", that
| reflects the actual mileage.
|
| Also to clarify, none of this is sworn, or "under penalty
| of perjury"
| hinkley wrote:
| Places like CarFax collect data from maintenance done on
| the vehicle. In which case you may be able to detect
| mileage rollback because the number goes negative between
| two visits.
|
| But a private vehicle fleet may use private mechanics,
| who probably do not report information like that (there's
| no financial incentive to do so, and there's probably no
| mechanism to make it easy).
|
| I might be able to tell that this Dodge Dart has had the
| frame straightened twice and the engine doesn't match the
| VIN number. But a private fleet vehicle is probably a
| black box.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| A few counter examples. Lol.
|
| Asbestos in talcum powder. PFAS exposure and dumping into
| public water supplies. Monsanto and roundup. Cigarettes health
| effects. Climate change from burning hydrocarbons. Norfolk
| southern and the controlled burn in east palistine. I could
| literally go on and on about the history of execs poisoning
| people and the planet while knowing full well about it. All to
| keep the profit margin, but you know this stuff you're just
| willfully ignoring it.
|
| If you're an ethical executive, you're a unicorn.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| > but you know this stuff you're just willfully ignoring it.
|
| That sure is what it seems like. C-level solidarity, even
| managed to blame the peons with just as little evidence as
| everyone else blaming the execs...
| salawat wrote:
| There:s a difference between strategic "say no evil, see no
| evil,..." Which is rampant in C-level management, and the
| public having difficulty leveraging legal discovery
| processes against corporations with far more budget to
| throw at defanging or maliciously complying with such
| request, and there "being no evidence".
|
| Evil exists. Stop shoving your head in the sand and realize
| it's an uphill fight.
| playingalong wrote:
| I agree with your first paragraph. The last sentence is a
| stretch though. The fact that there were multiple execs who
| were blatantly unethical doesn't mean most execs are
| unethical.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Would it be better if I listed every instance of executives
| choosing to poison people, willfully put them in dangerous
| working conditions to save some money against the law,
| releasing products they knew would maim people or kill
| people... all for marginal increases in share price? It's a
| long freaking list.
|
| This is the way this system is setup. Executives pursue
| profit at the expense of everything else. This is the
| cornerstone of capitalism.
| cj wrote:
| This is like listing a few well known black hat hackers
| and using that to conclude that all engineers are
| therefore hackers.
|
| There are tens of thousands of companies in the US. The
| vast majority of them aren't run by horrible people.
| jdm2212 wrote:
| There's a difference between "the executives are bad people
| doing a bad thing that is _maybe_ tortious" and "the
| executives are committing a crime".
|
| OP was claiming the latter is rare. You're saying the former
| is common. They're not the same thing though.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Just because it isn't prosecuted in our system doesn't mean
| that the execs choosing to poison people isn't a crime.
|
| Maybe I have a naive view of the law, but when you read a
| report that says your chemicals are poisoning people, and
| you choose to dump it in public waterways, you're guilty of
| a crime personally.
| jdm2212 wrote:
| You're confusing the concepts of "immoral" and "illegal".
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Poisoning people is a crime.
| cm2012 wrote:
| If its true I'm sure there will be a number of lawsuits. The
| existing court system can settle this kind of thing pretty well.
| sb057 wrote:
| Complete shot in the dark, but I bet culpability lies with
| FedEx's thousands of subcontractors. Their van lease agreements
| with FedEx obviously benefit them if they return them with fewer
| miles. Given that a great deal of contractors tiny family
| businesses, it doesn't surprise me that enough of them tried to
| eek out more profit for people to start to notice.
| [deleted]
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Doesn't surprise me, they didn't give me a cost of living
| increase for over a decade and new hires were making almost as
| much as I was when I quit after 15 and a half years (office job),
| along with about half the office quitting within a year.
| jmclnx wrote:
| > Tom Layton of Henderson, Nevada first noticed FedEx's odometer
| rollbacks in 2017. Layton, who's been buying and selling trucks
| and vans for 36 years, bought a FedEx Freightliner truck with
| around 180,000 indicated miles. When he sold the truck, his buyer
| hooked it up to a computer that told them the real mileage was
| around 400,000 miles.
|
| And yet another reason to ensure "Right to Repair" Laws are
| passed and enforced.
|
| Right now, one state, I forgot which, was informed by the auto
| industry they will ignore the law. I do not know if enforcement
| has started yet.
| sunk1st wrote:
| We only know that "buyer hooked it up to his computer and said
| [something]" - how does that strengthen an argument for (or
| against) right to repair, exactly?
| sp332 wrote:
| Car manufacturers are trying to lock out that kind of
| interface. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/06/feds-tell-
| automakers-no...
| primer42 wrote:
| Massachusetts I think
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/06/feds-tell-automakers-no...
| bagacrap wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Instructed by the federal government not
| to comply seems quite a bit different than what gp is
| implying. Why would legislators bother considering the full
| implications of their bills?
| philip1209 wrote:
| As a public company, FedEx undergoes routine audits. Do
| accounting firms audit vehicle mileage? I'd assume that vehicle
| depreciation is is an important part of the balance sheet
| calculations at Fedex, and that mileage might be audited as part
| of the depreciation functions.
| floren wrote:
| > they're resold and repurposed for various purposes.
|
| "Allow myself to introduce... myself"
| j-bos wrote:
| Is anyone facing jail time for this historic fraud?
| activiation wrote:
| No, because corporations are considered people that can't go to
| jail. They only get the benefits of being a person.
| db48x wrote:
| The phrase "corporations are people" is somewhat ambiguous.
| It does not mean that every corporation is a person, it means
| that corporations are _composed of_ people. (Think "soylent
| green is people", if it helps you understand.) The people in
| a corporation have rights, and thus any action taken by a
| corporation may be an expression of those rights. A corporate
| press release has just as much protection from the first
| amendment as any other statement a person might make.
|
| The people in a corporation can and do get sent to jail, even
| if the corporation itself does not.
| activiation wrote:
| It's not ambiguous and i think that you misunderstood the
| law.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _and then selling them at auction with 100,000_ ... _However,
| their real mileage was sometimes as much as four times the
| odometer readout_
|
| These numbers matter _more_ here. The Cummins /Allison
| engine/drive-train in these vehicles are otherwise good for 1
| million miles before rebuild on average until they are used as
| delivery trucks. The constant stopping and starting used as
| delivery trucks cuts that number down to around 480k miles. So
| they are selling vehicles that will require engine and
| transmission rebuilds in less than 80k miles. That's very shady.
| The engine rebuilds are usually around $10k _same as a
| refurbished engine_ and the transmission rebuild is around $3k.
| That does not count the cost to install them.
| bagacrap wrote:
| HN never fails to deliver someone who really sounds like they
| know what they're talking about. Internet doesn't really
| corroborate these numbers afaict but hey
| tredre3 wrote:
| I did a few google searches and even asked chatgpt, it's
| surprisingly hard to get a definitive answer.
|
| The consensus seems to be that after 500,000 miles the
| Cummins engine will either be dead or need to be rebuilt.
| 400,000 miles is considered high mileage that few achieve.
|
| So on the surface it seems like you might be right that
| LinuxBender was wrong. But he did sound quite knowledgeable,
| didn't he? So I still can't tell one way or another. Ah the
| beauty of the Internet :).
| jaclaz wrote:
| The issue is that "Cummins engine" is very generic, there
| are tens of different models, different bore x stroke,
| different power delivered, mounted on tens of different
| vehicles (with different weights and suited for different
| uses).
|
| Even the specific van/truck model Freightliner MT45
| seemingly can mount different models of Cummins engines.
|
| Unless you find data for the specific model of engine and
| truck it is difficult to get valid numbers.
|
| Generally speaking, for heavy trucks and large engines, the
| 600,000 km (or 400,000 miles) is the mileage where an
| overhaul (not a whole rebuild) is needed.
|
| In a professional use, unless it is used in shifts, a truck
| will probably make 40,000 miles per year, so it should
| happen around 10 years age.
|
| The most common engine on the Freightliner MT45 seems to be
| the Cummins 6.7, which should be a little more resistant
| than the older 5.9, both can do 500,000 miles and more, in
| the "right hands" and with "proper maintenance".
|
| I doubt that used in a fleet (possibly "proper
| maintenance", but likely a lot of "wrong hands") it can
| reach 400,000 miles or more, and it makes sense for a fleet
| manager to sell at an auction the vehicles that are
| expected to need a large overhaul or a rebuild soon, in the
| article they talk about the fleet renovation happening
| around 350,000 miles.
| AngryData wrote:
| Part of its lifespan depends on what kind of tuning it has,
| with some commercial engines being detuned for longevity
| instead of power output, and if it has extra optional
| features like additional oil or transmission cooling, or
| bypass oil filters, and other extras. Consumer vehicles
| however are often built and designed with lower lifespan
| expectations and a higher performance profile.
|
| But ive had numerous 90s+ low trim consumer vehicles
| breaking 300k miles easily and I know some semi-trucks do
| have 1 million+ miles on the original motor because of such
| features. And so while I don't have much experience with
| commercial delivery vehicles, I don't see any big problems
| with saying they could go a million miles themselves,
| although due to the nature of delivery driving and driver
| turnover I would also expect 400-500K miles to be when a
| rebuilt should be considered unless it was all done by one
| driver who doesn't drive like mad and they had skilled
| mechanics maintaining them. And if they didn't care about
| ruining the engine at some point I would expect 6-700K
| atleast if it was a well built commercial engine with
| commercial features.
| jprete wrote:
| This isn't the kind of information that has ever been easy to
| find on the Internet.
| uncletaco wrote:
| Well what does the internet say? Do you have links or
| context?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| There's so much more than just the engine, though. I'm dealing
| with a bunch of aging issues on a car right now. A lot of this
| stuff won't even show for a few years down the road.
|
| * Shocks and struts wear out
|
| * Catalytic converters are a semi-wear item
|
| * In winter states that use salt, rust absolutely destroys
| things. I've had the exhaust system rust through on all of my
| vehicles (simply happens with age).
|
| * Seat cushions, steering wheel, and other high touch surfaces
| wear. Likely not an issue _now_, but means a few years down the
| road, these things will be broken.
|
| * Engine accessories - belts, starters, alternators, pumps,
| etc. Everything is just a bit closer to it's failure point.
|
| ----
|
| Most of these issues aren't particularly expensive on their
| own, but they add up. Further, your expected maintenance is
| wildly different.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Salt (sodium chloride) is pretty rare anymore. It's more
| expensive than another option.
|
| Liquid magnesium chloride is the goto in most states now, and
| you'll be happy to know it's even worse!
| thworp wrote:
| Yea, I thought as much when I saw canadian cars for the
| first time, coming from a country that also salts liberally
| (but not with magnesium afaik). Ten year old cars of all
| makes having completely rusted through wheel arches, just
| insane.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| Real table salt is never to be used as an ice melter on
| streets. "Salt" here is used in the chemical definition I
| would think.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| The UK uses 2 million tonnes of rock salt a year for road
| gritting, which is basically dirty table salt.
| randomdata wrote:
| There is a salt mine up the road from me. The trucks
| start lining up for miles waiting for loads any time
| there is a winter storm expected.
|
| The only difference between that salt and table salt is
| that there is additional processing to the salt done when
| destined for table salt to ensure purity and shape. So,
| yes, they don't literally use table salt, but it is the
| same raw ingredient.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I know of a company importing salt here in Norway. They
| get boats filled with salt, and when doing the import
| customs declaration they have to decide if _that_ batch
| of salt is going on the dinner table or on the roads,
| because we have half VAT on food and ingredients.
|
| Same salt, different VAT rate depending on use.
| sgarman wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Belt It's still a mix
| often times but it's totally salt in some areas still.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Rock salt / sodium chloride is absolutely used as
| everyone is pointing out.
|
| Liquid sodium chloride is also used in some places.
|
| Neither of those are magnesium chloride and the
| distinction is important imo.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Liguid sodium chloride? Melting point is 1000C so I doubt
| that.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Allow me to introduce to you solutions.
|
| For a practical experiment... add salt to water. You've
| made a brine. That is all.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Well, yeah, but I've never heard anyone call that "liquid
| sodium chloride"
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I disagree that it's worse. From everything I've read about
| mag chloride it's still corrosive but much less so than
| traditional road salt.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I work in automotive. I think it's worse but in a
| different way.
|
| Sodium chloride attacks exposed metal pretty badly.
|
| Magnesium chloride seems to attack powdercoat, e-coat
| (electro dipped, all cars parts), and nickle coatings, as
| well as clear coat wet paint seemingly worse. Which then
| leaves spots exposed to rust. It seems to hang on to the
| vehicle and attack the entire winter. I've found that
| areas that switch to mag chloride have worse looking
| vehicles, so, imo, worse.
|
| It's also pretty awful for the environment.
| shagie wrote:
| It gets complicated.
|
| The magnesium chloride ice melt (which contains other
| compounds too) has lower toxicity than sodium chloride.
| That is particularly important for plants and pets.
|
| Rust inhibitors were things in road salt spreads in the
| past, but it is found that they can be very harmful to
| aquatic life ( https://onepetro.org/NACECORR/proceedings-
| abstract/CORR96/Al... ) so now they're generally not used
| ( https://www.cga.ct.gov/2014/rpt/2014-R-0001.htm )
| 83 wrote:
| Everyone in the rust belts should be putting fluid
| film/woolwax/krown under their vehicles. I think decades
| of shady "rust proofing" sprayers that were either a scam
| or did more harm than good (plastic/rubber under
| coatings) have put people off of doing this but there are
| products now that work well.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Wish they'd use something biodegradable like peas or beans.
| shagie wrote:
| Cheese To The Rescue: Surprising Spray Melts Road Ice -
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2014/01/21/264562529...
|
| > This winter, a Wisconsin county is fighting icy roads
| with a homegrown product: liquid cheese brine. Tens of
| thousands of gallons of the stuff are used each year
| along with road salt, according to officials in Polk
| County.
|
| Turning to beet juice and beer to address road salt
| danger - https://apnews.com/article/science-
| bb34e41bb95a4dfa85301621e...
|
| > CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Looking to strike a balance
| between ice-free roads and clean waterways, public works
| departments around the country are working to cut their
| salt use in winter by slathering the roadways with beet
| juice, molasses, and even beer waste to make them safer.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I'm in Ohio and last winter, the trucks were dumping grains
| of salt, not liquid.
| eschneider wrote:
| I'm surprised they didn't get caught sooner. If it was _just_
| an odometer rollback, it should have been easy to catch
| something being 'off' from a cursory inspection of the vehicle.
| The wear on things like driver seat bolsters is very different
| at 100K miles and 400K miles (and even at much lower mileage)
| and when stuff like that doesn't match the odometer readings,
| alarm bells should be going off.
| justinclift wrote:
| Note that the lawsuit was filed back in 2017, so it seems to
| have been working its way through the legal system for a few
| years at this point.
| xethos wrote:
| That's actually a seperate lawsuit, unrelated to the class
| action in the headline.
| justinclift wrote:
| Oh thanks. My misunderstanding then. :)
| cududa wrote:
| The original plaintiff in the 2017 lawsuit popped into
| the comments section of the parent article, and did quite
| an amusing "AMA" sort of thing there. He makes a great
| point by saying something like "I filed this lawsuit in
| 2017, which means they were made aware of this practice 6
| years they're doing this, and are apparently still doing
| it."
|
| Interesting that the top comment on this thread now is
| cautioning skepticism on the claims.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >The engine rebuilds are usually around $10k same as a
| refurbished engine
|
| What's the difference between a rebuilt engine and a
| refurbished engine?
| jaclaz wrote:
| A rebuilt engine is your engine where (hopefully) all needed
| to be replaced parts were actually replaced (locally).
|
| A refurbished engine is another engine (identical to yours)
| where all needed to be replaced parts were (still hopefully)
| replaced.
|
| The difference is that (it really depends on a case by case
| basis) your engine might need less parts replaced and the
| replacement is done by your local mechanic (all in all it can
| cost less in some cases).
|
| With refurbished engines all parts in a given list are
| replaced, no matter their current condition, and the
| replacement is done by workers that usually do everyday
| exactly that.
|
| The cost of a refurbished engine (you give them back yours
| that they will refurbish for next customer) can be a little
| less (including transport costs) because the refurbisher has
| spare parts cheaper due to quantity and personnel is faster
| (because they do this specific work everyday and have all the
| proper tooling) but often it is very similar.
|
| Your advantages with a refurbished engine are that it is
| generally faster than a local rebuild, and usually you are
| offered some kind of warranty (which may not be the case for
| a local rebuild).
|
| For a company, it is a way to minimize the stop of the
| vehicle and to place some responsibilities to the external
| supplier.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Whether it was machined or not upon removal
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Effectively the same _aside from time if you are waiting on
| yours to be rebuilt_. One is the engine you have that needs
| to be rebuilt and the other was rebuilt because someone did a
| swap and now its inventory in a shop that sells refurbished
| engines.
|
| [Edit] Adding jaclaz's very good point that one might be able
| to save money rebuilding their own if it requires less parts.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Some refurbished parts come with a short warranty as well
| which can help cut risk if the rebuild was done poorly.
| They come in crates from a factory so the people who did
| the work specialized and have probably seen all the
| potential problems.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Agreed that is the direction I would go. The only reason
| I can think to wait on a rebuild would be if one
| knows/trusts the mechanic and/or they are having
| modifications done to the engine _for cooling, turbo,
| fuel efficiency, brackets for different accessories like
| dual alternators, computer tuning after removing
| components from the engine, etc..._
| fredoralive wrote:
| I did have a weird thought, in a organisation as big as FedEx,
| would they have a pool of spare engines to minimise downtime?
| You could get unlucky and get a can with an engine that's been
| through a few chassis and end up with an ECU that knows the
| engine has done 400k miles whilst the chassis has only done
| 180k?
|
| Although that's probably a mad theory, if there is hijinks it
| probably is the good old fashioned kind, probably from this 3rd
| party middleman rather than FedEx themselves though.
| oasisbob wrote:
| The value of having reliable vehicles probably outweighs the
| possible savings due to reactive deferred maintenance.
| themitigating wrote:
| What about every other component in the car?
| dghughes wrote:
| I had a 1/2 ton Dodge with a Cummins. The one thing you know or
| learn fast with a diesel is you change the fuel filter often.
| Diesel engines are nearly indestructible if the maintenance is
| done right at the very least the fuel filter.
| yardie wrote:
| I've seen a diesel pulled out from the bottom of the bay,
| scrubbed clean, and installed in a new boat. The old boat
| caught on fire and sank. The old common rail diesels are damn
| hard to kill.
|
| Diesels need 3 things: fuel, oil, and coolant. Do not ever
| skimp on those 3.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| Air helps a tiny bit as well.
| yardie wrote:
| You don't supply the air. The list are the things a
| diesel need from you the operator.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I have doubts that we're getting an accurate story here, I know
| it's trendy to hate big companies but this seems like a really
| stupid thing to do and something you're likely to get caught
| doing if you're doing it on every truck.
|
| Anyone buying used delivery trucks knows they get driven all day
| every day until it's uneconomical for the owner to continue
| operating them. Hundreds of thousands of miles. It would be very
| unusual to see one for sale with under 200k miles, that's "just
| getting broken in" for trucks like this.
|
| I'm even surprised that these trucks have mechanical odometers. I
| havent's seen one in a passenger car in many years, they are all
| digital, rarely fail and (I assume) would be harder to tamper
| with.
| bhouston wrote:
| The article is dealing with a real lawsuit and it has many
| different members of the class action in multiple different
| states. They will have to prove their case in the court so it
| is unlikely that it is completely made up. There does seem to
| be a pattern of behavior here.
| delfinom wrote:
| >I have doubts that we're getting an accurate story here,
|
| Well that's the magic of the court system, the filing of the
| lawsuit is to either get them to settle/admit wrongdoing or to
| force this to discovery.
|
| >I'm even surprised that these trucks have mechanical
| odometers.
|
| Freightliner vans aren't fancy hi-tech vehicles, they are
| utility vehicles.
|
| But there's no difference between mechanical and digital
| odometers here. If you swap a digital cluster, you end up
| swapping the odometer reading. Architecturally vehicles have
| seldom moved on from storing the reading in the cluster.
|
| It really becomes a question of where do you store the reading?
| A engine computer is more likely to be replaced due to an
| accident than the odometer in the car even though on many
| vehicles it will still track the mileage.
|
| >they are all digital, rarely fail and (I assume) would be
| harder to tamper with.
|
| Actually, in most cars they are absolutely tamperable over CAN
| or physical access. If I remember right, the Honda digital
| cluster even up to my 2021 just has a standard SPI flash chip
| that you can tamper with to change the odometer value.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Depending on the manufacturer the digital odometers are even
| easier to tamper with. There are a dozen people on my local
| craigslist that will reset/rollback odometers for you for $100.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Some comment said these were resold as completely refurbed food
| trucks so the Fedex connection is dubious at best.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The lawsuit states that a number of people from different
| states are making the same accusation. That the trucks were
| utilized by Fedex for nearly 200k miles after the odometer swap
| is a worthwhile indicator that Fedex was complicit.
| sunk1st wrote:
| If all sales were brokered by the same 3rd party then it
| doesn't help us determine culpability.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| This seems to ignore that FedEx drove their altered
| odometers to ~200k miles.
| delfinom wrote:
| The problem is, it's not illegal to alter your odometer
| and drive it yourself.
|
| It is illegal not to report the odometer misreading in a
| sale. The real question is, who make the odometer change
| and where did the intentional or not breakdown happen on
| failure to report the odometer inaccuracy.
| last_responder wrote:
| They were refurbed AFTER they were sold by Fed-Ex . Not sure
| what your point is.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| For the how:
|
| _The lawsuit accuses FedEx of replacing the odometers in many of
| its vans with new ones that read zero miles, using the vans for a
| bit longer after that_
|
| Being born into a 5 digit odometer world and growing up around
| people who learned every way possible to suss out mileage - this
| seems nuts to me. How could they think that zero people would
| suspect and investigate an odometer swap?
|
| Past that, how could so few company mechanics notice a
| discrepancy between mileage and wear - that no whistleblowers
| came forward?
| delfinom wrote:
| Company mechanics don't give a fuck that's why, either they are
| underpaid and/or underpressure to get as many vehicles done
| each night as possible. (Read up on how the mechanics trade
| works in general and its pretty shit, mechanics are often paid
| on minimum wage + "commission" on amount of work rushed
| through). It's not a field that people are going to stick their
| necks out and make themselves unhirable either.
|
| In this case FedEx outsources the work to a fleet management
| services company to remove even more liability from themselves.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Yeah this is such garden variety auto fraud.
| [deleted]
| llimos wrote:
| When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away
| with" model of society?
|
| Maybe I'm naive but I think there used to be at least a modicum
| of self-restraint on this kind of thing. Sure, people always
| tried to make as much money as possible, but there used to be
| _some_ limit _somewhere_ - not because you 'll get caught but
| because c'mon, we just don't do that! That seems to have now been
| totally lost.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Because the cost of fraud is far too low and it's now factored
| into business plans. And no executive at FedEx will go to jail
| for this. When you can break the law for less than the profits
| you get for breaking the law, that's just got business sense.
| IE6 wrote:
| > the cost of fraud is far too low > no executive will go to
| jail for this
|
| This seems to be the pervasive trend
| dylan604 wrote:
| >When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away
| with" model of society?
|
| When were we _not_ there?
| willcipriano wrote:
| Lots of little girls and boys are taught that and end up
| somewhere screaming "but that's not fair!" in the rain.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And quickly realize they were lied to when they were taught
| things were fair to begin with, which reading between the
| lines argues that it wasn't fair to begin with. All of
| which to say, you just reiterated my point.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'm agreeing with you, the problem is we teach them it is
| fair and a lot of people don't get the memo.
| bee_rider wrote:
| When you came, you said to me as follows : "I will give Gimil-
| Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then
| but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which
| were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: "If you
| want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them,
| go away!"
|
| https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/537889-ol...
| dayvid wrote:
| That's existed for a long time. It's just easier to catch
| people nowadays.
| arbitrage wrote:
| It's still like this.
|
| Women and minorities get targeted by this sort of stuff all the
| time.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away
| with" model of society?
|
| If you judge society by the worst headlines and stories from
| social media then it's going to seem very bad
|
| You have to consider that news and social media only talk about
| the extreme stories. It's not representative of normal
| mistermann wrote:
| What's normal isn't all that matters though, and the broad
| consequences of the behavior of the capitalist class are
| starting to creep quite deeply into what's normal for a lot
| of middle and lower class people.
|
| Personally, I would like that to be countered much more like
| how they do things in China. Making an example of some bad
| apples can be very persuasive.
| omniglottal wrote:
| The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest
| members.
|
| These headlines are showing that the class of "weakest
| members" has grown to include most of the population.
|
| A representative of "normal" criminals demonatrates they are
| free to operate with healthy profit margins.
| seneca wrote:
| The US had golden years after World War 2. We had abundance,
| effective institutions, and high trust. We've been slowly
| coming off of that high for a while, and are returning to what
| is arguably a more typical state. Our institutions are
| crumbling, and societal trust is nose diving. Abundance still
| has a ways to go though.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > We had abundance, effective institutions, and high trust
|
| Yes! Everyone was a millionaire, law was perfect, no
| intuitions were abusing their powers, no government agencies
| ran experiments on unsuspecting citizens, everyone was
| friendly, no one stole anything, no corporation ever lied to
| the public about dangers of their products, no one was
| killed, etc! Good old days!
|
| Sarcasm aside, there were things that were better, but also
| huge amount of things was way worse.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| It's always been this way. Hell, the entire tech industry is
| this way. No one is innocent, and society is generally fine
| with it. What might be new is the fact that you hear so much
| more about it now because of the internet. What was once just
| local news before is now easily amplified.
|
| Society hasn't so much as changed as we've become more aware of
| all of the issues. And to top it all off, a lot of people want
| to go back to that again. Because ignorance is bliss.
| aaomidi wrote:
| It definitely wasn't always this way:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism
|
| Not that I agree with welfare capitalism, I think it's an
| unstable position and greed would always kill it. But let's
| not forget that for some people, the past was definitely
| better than the present when it came to some economic
| matters. Note: I'm not excusing or wanting the bigotry of the
| past.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| That seems much more limited than what I was talking about.
|
| "When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get
| away with" model of society?
|
| That's what I was talking about, and it's much broader than
| what's covered by welfare capitalism.
|
| > But let's not forget that for some people, the past was
| definitely better than the present
|
| We are talking about society as a whole. And "do whatever
| you think you can get away with" implies that it will be
| better for some people. Just because life it great doesn't
| mean people aren't doing whatever they think they can get
| away with. Just because the past was better doesn't change
| my assertion.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I think we were here for a lot of time in a lot of industries,
| but then specific people bring it to other industries.
|
| Elon brought this to tech in an extreme way.
|
| This problem won't be solved until CEOs and execs are able to
| take over behind limited liability.
| lmm wrote:
| When our shared cultural identity broke down, which I think was
| maybe late-'90s / early-'00s? "American" used to be practically
| an ethnicity. Now everyone knows their neighbour isn't like
| them and doesn't have the same values as them - so you might as
| well screw them for all they're worth.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Have you heard of Cecil Rhodes?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There was never restraint and it used to be much worse. This is
| why the large body of laws and regulations we have today came
| into being.
|
| Edit:
|
| Also, in the West society in general is one of abundance with
| people housed, clothed and educated in school from birth, which
| IMHO removes a lot of incentives for scams and fraud.
|
| But it used to be (and still is in some countries) that most
| people were born with nothing in a very tough environment and
| had to fight just to eat every day. The world of Charles
| Dickens was real.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| It's also why funding our institutions and fighting to keep
| them honest is so damn important. Regulation is insufficient
| without enforcement.
| betaby wrote:
| But that's precisely the problem! Every aspect of the life
| is over regulated and smaller bushiness are kneecapped On
| other side big companies can get away with whatever. At
| some states florist is a regulated profession and requires
| more hours of training than for police.
|
| "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law".
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _and requires more hours of training than for police._
|
| Citation? Best I could find is that Louisiana regulates
| floristry but doesn't mandate education (you need to take
| an exam). As for taking more hours of training than
| police I think you are conflating that fact in your head
| with this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-
| check/cosmetologists-police-trai...
|
| Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread about
| how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away with
| whatever" getting caught scamming people.
| betaby wrote:
| > Citation?
|
| https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/24
| 582...
|
| Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours.
|
| https://www.quebec.ca/en/government/quebec-at-a-
| glance/first...
|
| training is also ~1K hours.
|
| > Besides, I'm not sure how you got here in a thread
| about how Fedex, a "big compan[y] [which] can get away
| with whatever" getting caught scamming people.
|
| Car sales (any many other things) are heavily regulated
| where I live. Also it seems regulations are not enforced
| if one is 'too big to fall'.
| bentlegen wrote:
| I just clicked through that link you provided
| (jobbank.gc.ca) and there's nothing that says florists
| need "1k hours" of training. It's unclear that they even
| need to be licensed at all. I also Googled for "license
| quebec florist" and didn't get any meaningful results.[1]
|
| Can you provide better citation, or point explicitly to
| the licensing requirements?
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-
| b-d&q=license+f...
| realo wrote:
| Well... I can understand why quite a bit of specialized
| knowledge would be needed. You have to know your flowers
| well, know how to operate the refrigeration machinery,
| what flower keeps at which temperature, what to do if
| your flowers seem sick etc etc...
|
| Although a university degree "may be required by some
| employers ", I find this a bit much, however.
| bentcorner wrote:
| > https://www.on.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/
| 24582...
|
| > Florist, regulated in QC, training is ~1K hours.
|
| Is it? That page is extremely vague and doesn't seem to
| be specific to study hours or even education
| requirements.
|
| Floristry doesn't seem to be on the list of regulated
| professions in Quebec:
| https://www.quebec.ca/emploi3/metiers-
| professions/metiers-re..., but I may have missed it.
| betaby wrote:
| De-facto florists in QC need Certificat d'aptitude
| professionnelle
|
| Link in french shows 1K hours https://ecole-metiers-
| horticulture.cssdm.gouv.qc.ca/programm... to obtain one.
| halostatue wrote:
| Your claim is untrue (that such a certificate is required
| for florists). The link you provided is to a vocational
| training program for people who want to specialize in
| floristry (because they want to open a business). I have
| a friend here in Ontario who recently went through a
| similar program for landscaping. It was not required, but
| it opened a number of job opportunities that would not
| have been available to them otherwise.
|
| There are only a few jobs which have mandatory
| qualifications (left column in the link below) and a
| larger number of jobs which have voluntary qualification
| courses. There may be _secondary_ requirements (e.g., to
| work as a butcher and get insurance, your employees must
| have the voluntary qualification certificate), but these
| are not regulated professions the way you have been
| incorrectly claiming on this thread.
|
| https://www.emploiquebec.gouv.qc.ca/citoyens/developper-
| et-f...
| cde-v wrote:
| Stop ignoring the class war and start fighting it.
| Larrikin wrote:
| That seems like an issue regulating the police and not an
| issue with opening up a florist business.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Fines are just the cost of doing business and are priced
| in. Executive crime enforcement and resulting jail time
| is sorely needed. And not in luxury prisons, but in real
| prisons where the plebs go. Fines do nothing.
|
| One can dream, the rich at the top write all the rules.
| It's not like Joe Average is the one taking golf trips
| with Supreme Court justices and buying lobbyists to do
| their dirty work.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, and we are psychologically biased to think things are
| getting worse. On this sort of corruption/large scale fraud
| in the US, it simply is not.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >There was never restraint and it used to be much worse. //
|
| I think maybe, in the immediate past in the West it was
| better.
|
| We still lived and worked more locally, standing with
| neighbours mattered; corporations had less power than
| governments; governments were less able to manipulate their
| citizens, perhaps.
|
| Politicians seem to have learnt to give just enough to quell
| the riots and pervert the system for maximum financial gain
| for those who control them; spreading losses across all those
| being exploited. The UK's conservative government stole
| something like PS30B using preferential contracts in just two
| areas (IT, PPE supply) during the pandemic.
|
| In the recent past it seems highly unlikely that someone
| sacked twice for lying, Alexander Boris de Pfeffle Johnson,
| would get a job as an MP, nevermind becoming PM. In the past
| it would be inconscionable, now the party seems to shrug and
| say 'he brings in a lot of a Russian campaign money, lets
| make him PM'.
|
| In the UK there has been a systematic removal of scrutiny and
| oversight: choosing BBC management, choosing the civil
| service boss (it was previously always under open
| competition), changing the nature of parliamentary oversight,
| and of course Brexit helps considerably to this end.
|
| I've no doubt it was worse in the middle ages, but
| considerable doubt it was worse throughout the 20th Century.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think that part of the problem with politicians now is
| not necessarily that they are worse than before but that
| they cannot hide anything anymore and that scrutiny is
| total.
|
| Before many things were kept secret or could at least be
| kept out of the press. Now everything is photographed and
| filmed, and politicians have the bad habit of using
| messaging apps instead of making quiet phone calls or
| simply of having a private chat and so they leave plenty of
| incriminating evidence in writing.
| paxys wrote:
| When people committing these crimes could start hiding behind
| the safety of a "corporation".
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I think you are painting past very nicely, ie DuPont has been
| knowingly contaminating whole world since 80s at least. That's
| my childhood years, for sure I wasn't aware of anything similar
| happening. That doesn't mean it wasn't, news reel was setup
| differently these days. In 3rd world countries this would not
| raise eyebrows at all, there were (and still are) big issues
| around exactly this with used cars in Eastern Europe.
|
| People got addicted to ever more shocking news, I guess 9/11 in
| the west helped with that. Once you burn your receptors and
| they go back to flatline, the next kick needs to be a bit
| stronger to keep people engaged, and next one even more so. So
| just consuming news is a never ending progression of bad,
| amoral and over time progressively worse stuff.
| Veliladon wrote:
| It was always like that. At all points throughout history. So
| law makers put in laws and regulations that had punitive fines
| on the conduct for businesses. 49 U.S.C SS 32703, the law that
| makes federal odometer fraud a crime, was passed in October
| 1972 and had a $10,000 fine for screwing with an odometer. If
| inflation kept up with the punishment it'd be $71,897.64 today.
| But time passes, fine amounts don't get touched, and eventually
| it's profitable on the whole to do it. $10,000 if you get
| caught? That's less than the profit of the deal, so who cares?
| The conduct resumes.
| huijzer wrote:
| > When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away
| with" model of society?
|
| In the late 1980s, Koch Industries stole millions of crude oil
| each year by instructing their employees to always measure in a
| way that benefited Koch Industries [1].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| And they used the profits from that to nearly completely
| corrupt our government.
| short_throw wrote:
| If you think the entirety of corruption in the US is recent
| and tied to a specific family you need to switch to a media
| source with more nuance.
| JustBreath wrote:
| Honestly I'd lean towards naive.
|
| If anything, suspect on a national / global scale there's far
| more capacity for society to hold people and organizations
| accountable than any time in history.
|
| "Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise.
| Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when
| you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were
| reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their
| elders." - Wear Sunscreen
| tacocataco wrote:
| There is so much effort to distort history and the reporting
| of current events.
|
| If you don't learn history, and then lso not pay attention to
| what's happening around you, of course you will pine for the
| good old days when it was easier to control the narrative.
| codexb wrote:
| Are you kidding? It used to be common knowledge that virtually
| every used car dealer was committing some sort of odometer or
| other fraud just 25-30 years ago. The advent of anti-tampering
| devices in cars, manufacturer certified pre-owned, carfax,
| listing of odometer values on registrations and insurance
| forms, and hefty fines (and even prison) for dealer fraud cut
| down on that.
| [deleted]
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Maybe it has something to do with talking a package from Southern
| California, to Florida, to Texas, delay shipping twice, and then
| back to Northern California. If I need the item and I see FedEx
| as the shipping agent, I go look elsewhere.
| sunk1st wrote:
| A close reading of the article leaves room to doubt whether FedEx
| was complicit in the alleged scheme. I'm not surprised to see
| that FedEx denies the allegations. Given that there is another
| defendant in the lawsuit I suspect there is more to this story
| than what's been presented here.
| habnds wrote:
| not very much room... the companies weren't all that separate
| and fedex profited off the alleged fraud
|
| >>> FedEx started auctioning old vans off through its fleet
| company, Holman Fleet Leasing (also a defendant in the
| lawsuit). The lawsuit alleges that both FedEx and Holman
| intentionally replaced the odometers to artificially inflate
| the values of the vans, so they'd sell for higher prices at
| various auctions throughout the United States. Then, according
| to the accusations, both companies would split the profits.
| sunk1st wrote:
| The allegation is that both FedEx and Holman were involved,
| yes. If FedEx can produce an audit trail showing that the
| vehicles left FedEx facilities with true odometers then I
| don't think Holman stands a chance.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| Or if FedEx can produce an audit trail indicating the
| odometers were faulty and had been replaced. A vehicle with
| 400,000 miles has seen a lot. If the dash gauges were
| replaced around 220,000 miles, then 180,000 miles have
| passed since then - and the new odometer will read 180,000.
|
| It is normal practice to replace a broken odometer with a
| new one. That is not fraudulent. However, when that vehicle
| is sold the seller is legally required to flag the title.
|
| A lot of liability depends on why the odometer was
| replaced, who transferred the title (does FedEx transfer
| the title to Holman before sending the vehicle to auction,
| or does Holman hold the title the entire time?), and
| whether the title was appropriately flagged as "Not actual
| mileage".
| mdrzn wrote:
| "It isn't illegal to replace odometers and it isn't even illegal
| to sell vehicles with odometers that have inaccurate mileage
| readouts. However, to do so, a disclaimer needs to be made by the
| seller, indicating to the buyer that its mileage readout is
| inaccurate and that the odometer was replaced."
|
| How is it even legal? "You can lie but you have to admit to it".
| jabradoodle wrote:
| If your odemeter malfunctions and you don't realise you may
| legitimately have no idea what the true value is.
| kgermino wrote:
| Sometimes you need to replace the odometer (or the module it's
| built into) and you can't always update the new one with the
| correct value. Sometimes parts break and the odometer is no
| longer accurate, it's reasonable to say you can still sell a
| car in that condition if you disclose the situation
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Because you're not lying at that point? You've just told them
| that the odometer reading is wrong, and unless you can find
| some other way to backup your mileage claim, they'll just be
| priced as if they were nearly maxed out?
| rblatz wrote:
| It's called a True Mileage Unknown title brand. It
| significantly impacts the value of a vehicle.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Odometers break and get replaced (and you can't set the new one
| to the old value).
|
| Sometimes they get stuck.
|
| It isn't lying if you say "this odometer is 40k low".
| LocalH wrote:
| > and you can't set the new one to the old value
|
| Perhaps this should be possible? If nothing else, it should
| technically be possible to hook it to a load and run the
| odometer _up_ to what it should be. You 'd have to be careful
| not to overshoot, since you can't reduce the value on an
| odometer if they're properly designed.
|
| It'd still be useful to denote "this vehicle has had the
| odometer replaced, but care was taken to ensure the odometer
| value is within +/- 1% of the authentic value"
|
| Of course, this is really only for mechanical-style
| odometers. Digital ones, I know almost nothing about,
| wouldn't surprise me if there is no "stored mileage" in such
| an odometer.
| sunk1st wrote:
| If the replacement process is controlled (in the technical
| sense of the word) then yeah, you have room to make the
| case that your title should not have an asterisk next to it
| saying the true mileage is unknown.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The alternative would be a broken odometer is a totaled car,
| right? That wouldn't make much sense
| planede wrote:
| One alternative is to require that the new odometer is wound
| forward to match the old odometer's value. But I'm not sure
| if odometers have this capability.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Even if they do that would require you catch the error
| fairly quickly. I'm not sure how long it would take me to
| realize my odometer was broken, honestly.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You can use the speedometer check zones on the
| Interstates to check this, Just note the value at the
| zero sign and when you pass the last sign note the value
| again and do the math.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I believe the comment that you're replying to might mean
| that they wouldn't notice if their odometer was totally
| broken and didn't increase at all. I am the same. I
| assume the mechanics would notice when the yearly
| inspection showed the same odometer reading as the
| previous year.
| behrlich wrote:
| > You can lie but you have to admit to it
|
| That's the difference between fraud and not-fraud right? "It's
| not illegal to install a new odometer unless you lie about the
| odometer reading for money" doesn't seem like a contradiction
| to me.
| jstanley wrote:
| If your odometer breaks and you need to replace it, what else
| are you supposed to do?
|
| It has to be legal to have an incorrect odometer reading
| otherwise, unless the odometers are easily changed to display
| arbitrary readings, entire cars are scrapped as soon as they
| need replacements.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Particularly with company/fleet trucks or cars, you normally
| have an "own" paper log with all the repairs and maintenance
| performed, so, if you are in good faith, if the odometer
| breaks at (say) 190,000 miles and the new one reads 110,000,
| you can easily prove that the vehicle is at 300,000.
|
| When you sell that vehicle only stating "odometer reads
| 110,000" you are inducing the buyer into error (lying by
| omission, and you are in bad faith as you have the documents
| that reveal the real mileage).
|
| For those rare cases where there is no such documentation
| there is usually the formula "mileage unknown" or similar,
| but usually it draws the price down to the minimum.
| mdrzn wrote:
| > If your odometer breaks and you need to replace it, what
| else are you supposed to do?
|
| I honestly didn't even think about that. Thanks for
| broadening my vision. I legit was only thinking about the
| downside of it.
| postalrat wrote:
| Can gauges lie?
| last_responder wrote:
| Gauges always tell the truth as they know it to be.
| treesknees wrote:
| As the previous paragraph to your quote states,
|
| >odometers, as automotive components, do occasionally wear out
| or malfunction and need to be replaced
|
| In many vehicles the mileage is stored in an engine control
| unit and the odometer is simply a digital display. In others
| it's stored electronically in the instrument cluster. What if
| you need to replace a faulty ECU or instrument cluster? There
| are ways to reflash that data so replacements are accurate.
|
| If you're selling a vehicle at auction, typically it's as-is.
| So if the ECU or cluster are having problems and can't read out
| the mileage, it seems unfair to make it illegal to sell.
|
| A disclaimer isn't admitting to lying. It's admitting that the
| reported value could be inaccurate. That seems to be the most
| fair requirement in an auction scenario.
| [deleted]
| oefrha wrote:
| > When he sold the truck, his buyer hooked it up to a computer
| that told them the real mileage was around 400,000 miles.
|
| I'm not knowledgeable about odometers at all, but if it's as easy
| as "hooking up to a computer" to get the real mileage, why don't
| people do that when they buy the trucks?
| vGPU wrote:
| The OP posted a comment on the article that addressed this:
|
| >>Tom Layton here, the original plaintiff. I will check back
| often to answer all your questions. First off, you cannot check
| out auction vehicles with OBD scanners or any other engine scan
| tool because the auto auctions prohibit any such scanners on
| auction property. Furthermore., of the 500 or so I purchased
| 99% were purchased online at auctions all over the country. I
| had to believe what the auction stated on their condition
| reports. As far as wondering if FedEx did this on purpose? Both
| FedEx and Holman were fully aware of this 6 years ago when I
| filed my lawsuit in 2017. Do you think they stopped? Nope. They
| continued selling the replaced odometer vans defrauding the
| buyers right on up to, and including, this year, 2023. I think
| that answers the question if they did it on purpose! Post any
| questions about this largest odometer fraud in U.S. history and
| I will post answers periodically.
| [deleted]
| raincom wrote:
| By 'hooking up to a computer', one tampers odometers in the
| first place. That's how leased cars' odometers are tampered by
| some lessees.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| The OBD port can easily spit out a read only mileage reading
| which is not tampering with the recorded value in the ECU.
| The OBD port is supposed to be user accessible and usable by
| the end user and 3rd parties (at least in the EU) even though
| manufacturers are trying their hardest to put "non diagnostic
| data" behind their proprietary software and/or wireless
| comms. Reading the data from the OBD port isn't (at least
| shouldn't) be classed as tampering.
|
| One of the ways tampering happens on digital dashes that read
| the mileage from the ECU is by putting a interceptor in
| between the dash and the ECU as it's easier than
| reprogramming the ECU. https://youtu.be/f4af1OBU5nQ
| yetihehe wrote:
| This comment was not clear. Odometer in car computer can be
| changed too. There exists special obd command to do this
| (when you need to replant ECU between engines), but you need
| to have a password (which is provided with "official"
| diagnostic computers/tools). If car has no mechanical
| odometer (most new passenger cars today don't), this is the
| only way to change odometer values.
| fmntf wrote:
| This is not how odometers are scammed. The EEPROM gets
| rewritten to zero, then you can increment the odometer to
| your preferred value via OBD/UDS. Please note that you can
| only increment the odometer without a specialized
| (authenticated) diagnostic session.
|
| FYI I do not reset odometers, I am on the other side,
| developing software for instrument clusters.
| et2o wrote:
| It is not allowed prior to purchase
| habnds wrote:
| wholesale auctions operate with a surprising amount of trust,
| often buyers never actually see the car, they buy based on the
| specs and description. The vehicle is then shipped to the
| buyer, and in some cases. the buyer, when finally seeing the
| vehicle, will get in touch with the seller and say "this isn't
| "great" condition, this is "good", for _reasons_" and negotiate
| an adjustment of the price to reflect that. The plaintiff is in
| the comments of that article and mentions most auctions don't
| allow computer diagnostics on a car.
| learn_more wrote:
| I've noticed that these commercial auctions conspicuously do
| not publish the mileage in the listing, just a photo of the
| odometer. It's interpretation is up to the buyer. That
| behavior should tell you something.
| stevehawk wrote:
| >wholesale auctions operate with a surprising amount of trust
|
| Just to correct this - auctions operate with a whole lot of
| caveat emptor
|
| which is why auctions are supposed to be relatively "value
| buys".. in an auction transaction.. if you're not sure if
| you're the sucker... then you're the sucker.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Most auctions just don't allow real inspection at all. At
| best they pop the hood and let you look at the undercarriage
| or drive the car by for a minute (and quite a few auctions
| will ask you to pay for even that tiny amount of inspection).
|
| That said - odometer fraud is a big fucking deal here. A
| vehicle with unknown mileage is worth far less at auction
| (just the fact that it's unknown is a huge flag) and if the
| auctioneer was aware of the fraud (as they're implying Holman
| Fleet Leasing was) then I'm curious to see how this is
| resolved... a smaller auction house would likely see jail
| time for several employees.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| One would think that the auctioneer would benefit from
| maximal disclosure, as the present situation as you
| describe it is precisely that portrayed in Akerlof's "The
| Market for Lemons":
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>
|
| Moreover, many states require regular smog checks, at least
| on passenger vehicles (though I'm not sure what the
| situation is for commercial vehicles). These entail a
| comprehensive electronic data record, much of which is
| automatically captured from the vehicle, _and which is
| available for sale_. Auto insurance companies have used
| these data for years, if not decades, to set policy rates
| as miles driven is a principle driver (ahem) of risk.
|
| If VINs are avaiable for the vehicles being auctioned, it's
| possible that a service such as CARFAX might carry such
| data. I suspect bulk / corporate buyers would tend to have
| access to such information, whilst small-time operators /
| individuals likely would not, which throws an additional
| bias into such auctions.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The auctioneer knowingly keeping a secret that could
| cause a downturn in the market once discovered and
| publicized in years and in the meantime keeping a giant
| client sounds very rational.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's a short-term optimisation which severely discounts
| future reputational and legal costs and consequences.
|
| Though, yes, reality tends to be messier than economist's
| idealised models.
| [deleted]
| registeredcorn wrote:
| > Most auctions just don't allow real inspection at all. At
| best they pop the hood and let you look at the
| undercarriage or drive the car by for a minute
|
| Why is this? Just a time restraint thing, or what? I don't
| understand why an auction wouldn't allow bidders an
| opportunity to check out the product before they purchase.
| The pessimist in me would say it's in the auctioneers best
| interest to give as little information as possible, in
| order to get the highest bids, but it seems odd that this
| sounds to be a standard practice.
|
| Shouldn't bidders insist on at least a single 3rd party to
| say the mileage for the crowd?
| justinator wrote:
| Well it's being sold at auction, not by the first party
| and it's very likely that any questions a bidder has
| can't be answered anyways. You take your chances and the
| payoff is a good deal for you. The auction makes money
| from volume.
|
| I agree though that changing the odometer is criminal to
| do. But one shouldn't be buying cars at auction unless
| they know what they're doing. Buying a used FedEx van at
| auction comes with a few known... stipulations.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Ah, that's a good point I hadn't considered. Thanks for
| the response. :)
| oefrha wrote:
| > most auctions don't allow computer diagnostics on a car.
|
| I was thinking about running the diagnostics immediately
| after delivery instead of after two dozen mechanical
| failures.
|
| But another comment says the diagnostics software is very
| expensive and difficult to acquire, makes sense if true.
| jprete wrote:
| Automotive repair products are oriented around business
| purchases and sales, so everything is expensive, and
| designed for professional repair of either lots of various
| customer vehicles or a managed fleet of vehicles.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A generic OBDII scanner that will read mileage and engine
| fault codes is not expensive, they are on Amazon and other
| sellers. The better ones run up to several hundred dollars.
| For some things you do need the manufacture's software but
| not for reading mileage and standard fault codes.
| vGPU wrote:
| Presumably this was through auctions like copart. They operate
| on the basis of "this is the info, these are the pics, good
| luck!".
|
| Now, if, for example, you buy a car that is advertised as runs
| & drives and it turns out the car does not, in fact, drive -
| you can talk to them and have them buy the car back or
| whatever. This happens every now and then. But aside from that,
| you're SOL.
|
| I've purchased a number of cars from them, and one issue that
| comes up fairly often is that they load the cars via forklift.
| Often, the forklift will cause damage to the underbody that was
| not present previously. In cases like that, you're still pretty
| much SOL.
| jmclnx wrote:
| IIRC, in most cases these computers and software are very
| expensive. Also getting one can be very difficult in many
| places depending upon the Laws. The Auto Industry really only
| wants dealerships to have these.
| shawnz wrote:
| You can get an OBD2 diagnostic device on Amazon for $20
| oasisbob wrote:
| Will it read all the manufacturer-specific clusters needed
| to confirm odometer fraud on this model of vehicle?
|
| I use my $20 eBay OBD2 all the time on my Mk4 Jetta to
| confirm faults. However, even with such an old car with
| decent support, there are many things I'm unable to do or
| see.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The better ones will, maybe not the $20 ones. But even
| the good ones are only a few hundred dollars.
| chollida1 wrote:
| This hasn't been true for 20 years.
|
| The influx of chinese products has drive the price down to
| less than $20.
| hirundo wrote:
| Here's a highly rated one for $26
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Veepeak-OBDCheck-Bluetooth-
| Diagnostic...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Highly rated by Amazon reviews and ratings? Yeah, that's
| reliable information that is highly protected from abuse
| and fraud. /s
| fest wrote:
| Living in a country with rampant odometer tampering: it often
| requires specialized diagnostics scanner and knowledge where to
| look (which is different for various vehicles).
|
| For example, on a VAG car, most generic diagnostics scanners
| just report the mileage as it's recorded in non-volatile memory
| in ECU/odometer/transmission (which people know how to change).
|
| But a specialized scanner (VAG COM, for example) also displays
| freeze-frame information of diagnostic faults (and this
| sometimes includes mileage, depending on the module).
|
| If the people doing corrections change the mileage reported by
| major modules that contain this information but do not bother
| to erase diagnostic faults, you can sometimes find the real
| mileage, as recorded by electric seat module which detected
| undervoltage condition when the battery was removed, or
| headlight module when the bulb burned out.
| yardie wrote:
| VAG COM alerted me to a faulty module because its mileage was
| wildly different from all the other modules in the car.
| fmntf wrote:
| Deleting the DTCs is really trivial. It's just a standard UDS
| command. The only way to avoid this kind of scam is buying
| vehicles that have done the official maintenance/inspection.
| That will report the odometer to the car maker.
| fest wrote:
| > The only way to avoid this kind of scam is buying
| vehicles that have done the official
| maintenance/inspection.
|
| Agree, but not everyone here can afford <5 year old
| vehicle, so people have to do with the means they have. As
| soon as warranty/lease ends, people generally go with
| cheaper, non-manufacturer maintenance shops.
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| All I can think is "why would you replace every odometer if you
| weren't committing fraud?". Like that costs money and time to do.
| Were they _all_ broken and needed replacing?
|
| And if you aren't committing fraud and there's a reasonable
| reason to do this, why not do it just before sale? Why drive
| another 100k on them afterwards?
|
| It's just so dumb and obvious.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| Some odometers have common problems. For several years Toyota's
| digital odometers had a bug that caused them to stop counting
| at 299,999 miles. Porsche's mechanical odometers from the late
| 1970's through the mid 1980's had a plastic gear that tended to
| strip out and cause them to stop counting at some random point.
|
| It is possible FedEx's odometers all came from the same
| supplier and all had a MTBF of around 300,000 miles - which
| would explain driving another 100k miles before selling the
| trucks when they reach 400,000 miles.
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